UPDATE: Crane operator discharged after Perenco platform incident

Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va & 

Ke­jan Haynes 

A crane op­er­a­tor has been dis­charged from hos­pi­tal, af­ter he was in­jured when a crane be­came de­tached from its pedestal dur­ing lift­ing op­er­a­tions at Peren­co’s Samaan Al­pha Drilling plat­form on Wednes­day.

In a state­ment, Peren­co Trinidad and To­ba­go said the in­ci­dent oc­curred around 4 pm on Oc­to­ber 14, prompt­ing the im­me­di­ate ac­ti­va­tion of its emer­gency re­sponse team.

The op­er­a­tor was con­scious in the wa­ter and climbed aboard the ves­sel Mr Row with as­sis­tance from its crew, who ad­min­is­tered first aid.

Peren­co said the com­pa­ny’s med­ical di­rec­tor pro­vid­ed guid­ance dur­ing the ini­tial re­sponse, while a medic from the Samaan field was mo­bilised to the ves­sel to pro­vide fur­ther treat­ment.

The op­er­a­tor was tak­en ashore ac­com­pa­nied by the field medic and trans­port­ed by am­bu­lance to South­ern Med­ical Cen­tre in San Fer­nan­do for fur­ther as­sess­ment and treat­ment.

By 6.45 am on Thurs­day, the op­er­a­tor had com­plet­ed all med­ical checks and was dis­charged from hos­pi­tal. He was treat­ed for an abra­sion to his fore­head and a lac­er­a­tion to his left fore­arm, the com­pa­ny said.

Peren­co said all oth­er per­son­nel aboard the Mr Row and at the Samaan Al­pha in­stal­la­tion were un­harmed and ac­count­ed for.

The ves­sel was repo­si­tioned away from pipelines and sub­sea in­fra­struc­ture, with the crane se­cured on its deck. The com­pa­ny said there was no ev­i­dence of fur­ther con­cerns or an es­ca­la­tion in­volv­ing pipelines or oth­er in­fra­struc­ture.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries and the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Agency were in­formed and kept up­dat­ed through­out the in­ci­dent, ac­cord­ing to Peren­co.

The com­pa­ny said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion had be­gun and a team was sched­uled to trav­el off­shore to the Samaan Al­pha plat­form on Thurs­day.

Peren­co op­er­ates the Samaan field as part of the Teak, Samaan and Poui block, an off­shore oil-pro­duc­ing area in Trinidad.

Ed­i­tor’s note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this sto­ry in­cor­rect­ly re­port­ed that the crane op­er­a­tor had died fol­low­ing the col­lapse of a crane at Peren­co’s Samaan Al­pha plat­form. Guardian Me­dia was ini­tial­ly giv­en in­for­ma­tion that the op­er­a­tor had died. Peren­co has since con­firmed that he sur­vived, was treat­ed at hos­pi­tal and dis­charged. We apol­o­gise for the er­ror.